§ 12. Mr. KnapmanTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he intends to bring forward his proposals giving courts stronger power to hold parents liable for the criminal activities of young offenders.
§ Mr. WaddingtonWe shall bring forward legislation to give effect to the proposals in the White Paper, "Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public", including those on parental responsibility, at the first suitable opportunity.
§ Mr. KnapmanDoes my right hon. and learned Friend accept that one third of all crime is perpetrated by the under-17s and that some parents do not seem to know where their children are either by day or at night? Could the regulations therefore be introduced at the earliest possible date, bearing in mind the experience in the United States of America where similar regulations have caused parents to consider their children's actions more carefully?
§ Mr. WaddingtonI agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of that. It should be possible—I believe that it is—to bring home to parents their responsibility when a child goes wrong, without making the parents guilty of a criminal offence. We can do that by strengthening the powers to require parents to pay the fines imposed on their children, allowing magistrates to assess the fines according the parents' means as well as the child's means, requiring a parent to attend court when a child is brought to court and binding parents over to exercise proper control over their children. I should have thought that all right-minded people would understand the common sense of those proposals.